Chris, PR can use for Social media too, if you know to combine between them in the right way.
after all, many companies opening blogs and use it for PR, so…

but from my side, i don’t like the idea using social media for PR, otherwise the all social media sites will look like a big spam…isn’t?

Hi Chris, I’m not sure I’m the best person to try to answer this, but I think it’s a really interesting question.

First, as I understand it, PR is a subset of marketing, and much easier to define, so they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive. And PR is essentially getting your story out there, through news releases, gaining press and, more broadly, through any other external communications, is certainly a part of a social media campaign.

Whether a company is reaching out to the press or to all us citizen journalists and commentators in the social media world, I believe much of its message can be considered PR. However, if a company is engaging users in other ways — through creating applications, making videos that are more entertaining than informational and building relationships around the brand, that would be marketing.

The line, of course, isn’t exactly clear cut, but I believe the PR impact would probably be measured in mentions and links and hard information about the company, while the marketing impact would be measured in interaction, brand friends and visits to the company’s site/store/online property.

So is PR about sending information out to the world while marketing is about bringing people in and keeping the conversation going, or is that too simplistic?

Excellent topic, Chris. I am a PR guy by trade and most definitely think social media is essentially public relations online. Actually, a better definition would be the online confluence of PR, community relations and word-of-mouth marketing. But strong PR execution, philosophy and principles all translate to strong social media.

The bottom line is that social media evolved because people were running away from marketing. Public relations can (though not as it has behaved in the last 20 years or so, it too must change) offer that permissive avenue through which engaging and conversing with consumers takes place, and I think better so than marketing.

Now, smart marketers will approach social media with a PR mindset. I’m not saying marketers should stay out, but public relations types (to answer your question) I think have a more natural mechanism to fit into the social media strategy space than those trained as traditional marketers. And not because of training, because of the acceptance of the community to the methods.

Social media is more for anyone who wants to demonstrate knowledge and interest or join the conversation that has already started Chris.

What do you think?

If my foray into social media has taught me anything, it’s that the benefits of such might on the surface appear to initially be for PR, but the long-term benefits fall more into the general marketing area. Perhaps tackling social media comes more easily to PR types than general marketeers, as some of the skills needed to be successful in social media mirror those skills of PR people. But, again, I think in terms of benefits those run the marketing gamut.

PR is much better suited to exploiting the tools social media provides than marketing.

We flacks — in an ideal world at least — have been in the conversation business for a long time. Marketers have been much better at spray-and-pray blasting messages out. (A crude oversimplification, but I do think the point is valid).

PR can do things much more in line with the spoken or unspoken rules of social media — what Joseph Jaffe calls EPIC (Experience, Permission, Involvement, Conversation) — than marketers have (not to say they can’t).

We have a natural advantage and I hope we don’t let it slip away.

Chris,

The interesting thing is I just had this discussion with a bizdev guy for a social media tracking service. He indicated that he is making more headway selling the concept of tracking social media to PR agencies and folks than to ad agencies.

Go backwards from your objectives and you’ll find the answer waiting. Sometimes the situation will lend itself to Marketing while others will be PR.

The answer lies in the end game, which is, of course, dependent on the client and a host of other factors that come along with that client’s products and needs.

I think social networking can accommodate both functions as long as those who understand the way it all fits together are crafting and deploying strategies appropriately.

Chris,

I think social media has value for BOTH PR and marketing. The question is HOW it is used.

My belief is that PR and external communications (media, social, investors, etc.) must be done in tandem with the larger marketing goals of an organization. Otherwise, there would be a disconnect with your target audience.

Bob indicated that marketing has been better at the spray approach. I agree to a degree. With social media, marketers now have an opportunity to create a conversation. Because PR is measured by placements rather than hard ROI, PR can be the way by which marketers begin creating that conversation.

As the measurement aspect of social media matures, this is where PR and marketing come together. In the end, the goal is to reach customers. Who cares if PR or marketing leads the charge!

When you say “PR person”, I have a broad idea of what that person does, in terms of responsibilities and approach.

When you say “Marketer”, it tells me very little about how an individual / organisation might approach the problem of “getting customers to come to them.”

I’ve worked with companies where “brand image” was everything (even more important than usability in web design, for example.)

I’ve also worked with companies at the “direct response marketing” end of the spectrum.

The brand image lot tend to “get into” social media if and only if they decide that tools like blogs / twitter and so on “align with brand values.”

The “direct response” crowd tend to get blogs, because they’re just another channel to market for the message which is always a specific call to action.

I have to say, that social media is better for me in LEARNING about what I’m going to need to provide next… but traditional “funnel-based” web marketing is what actually pays the mortgage each month.

Unfortunately, there are still too many PR and marketing professionals who believe that social media will take away their jobs. That social media will render them obsolete. So sad.

I think it’s a completely artificial distinction. PR and marketing are both about persuasive communication.

Traditional PR and traditional marketing rely on one-way communication–either media or advertising sending a message to a consumer, who had very limited ability to say anything in response.

New PR and new marketing are both about conversation, and in a social media context they’re not two different disciplines. In theory, PR practitioners might be a little more accustomed to moving quickly and thinking on their feet, but frankly from what I’ve seen, a lot of PR practitioners have as many (or more) bad habits to unlearn and a greater resistance to change.

For the increasing number of PR/marketing folks who get it, it doesn’t matter if you call it new marketing or PR 2.0: it’s the same work.

I think one of the mistakes we make is of restricting social media to a communications methodology. In that way, it is appropriate to compare it to public relations. In that context, asSonia Simone points out, there is little difference.

What many marketeers are neglecting is social media as a corporate intelligence methodology. In my recent blog I discussed how I was able to use social media to find out about colleagues who were worthwhile meeting at an upcoming industry event. In addition to professional background, I was even able to fish up pictures of a large number of my colleagues, making my company’s participation even more effective.

I consider this kind of leveraging of social networks to be extremely effective. However, it is significantly more time-consuming than blogging or producing other outgoing company messages. Keeping a serious database on all of your B2B contacts is getting increasingly complex, but if done correctly, it will pay off.

There’s much ado about “who” (in the corporation) will “own” social media. PR? Sales? IT? Marketing?

I scratch my head.

Who in the corporation owns email? IM? whiteboards? those dodgy old interdepartmental mail folders?

Yeah. So that totally doesn’t answer your question, but I was never great at following the recipe.

Chris,
Social media appears to reach more of a PR type solution when you hit critical mass. Blogs and information that is published directly to your URL are definitely PR even before critical mass, but items like Flickr, Twitter, and others seem to come out of a marketing initiative and then serve as a really great PR net incase something goes awry.

Is this a trick question?

Well let’s see… PR falls under the marketing umbrella. It is the element that seeks to gain credibility by leveraging third party support from credible sources. Traditionally, those sources were journalists. However, social media has given people like you, a voice of authority without the need for a publication based on your knowledge and the quality to communicate your thoughts. So when I outreach to influential bloggers discussing things related to my client, that would fall under PR because I am not directly trying to sell something but rather raise awareness and credibility.

Blogger outreach is not the only tactic in the social media toolkit. You won’t find Facebook app, branded communities or corporate blogs in the new PR for Dummies guide.

This is one great question. I’m a traditional marketer who has been following the social media scene with great interest. I love the idea of a conversation with customers, but I don’t want to intrude on a social site with a marketing message either.

So, at first glance, it’s easier to see the PR play which is generally more about branding or sharing information than about an offer with a call to action. But, as a customer myself, I think that a compelling marketing message would be welcome if it is right on the mark, meaning I and my friends will benefit from participating. The challenge is to come up with that compelling message or offer in a way that is entertaining, provokes conversation, and is not perceived as invasive or controversial.

I think social media tools - not the content that’s produced but the tools to produce it - actually do more to break down these silos than anything else. There are too many instances of good ideas being thrown out because people think “those are more marketing.”

Social media is about finding the right tools to become a natural part of the conversation and not just shouting ad messages at people. The disintegrating lines between practice areas is why you see so many social media specialists who are just looking for a good way to talk to people.

Hard to call it for any one function– developers blog, executives blog, but essential, social media is a communicators’ tool.

If a “marketing” person declares they are a communicator, then great. If they are more interested in generating leads and doing all the other boring stuff that directly makes money, then– well, someone has to do it, and social media may be a great tool for part of that function.

I’m a PR guy, and I am completely comfortable thinking of social media communications as a communications function, completely integrated with all the “old” communications functions. After all, they’re just tools. They’re newer, they’re cooler, but they’re tools.

I just know that it’s not just us PR people out here.

That’s pretty cool too.

[...] Networks, Marketing and PR Jump to Comments Chris Brogan asked a question on his blog -Is social media built more for PR types? Is the value there much [...]

First, nice work on the blog strategy of getting your readers to write your posts for you. It clearly worked and I had never thoguht of doing that. Genius!

I really think that PR and Marketing is becoming more intertwined these days. More and more I think companies are using social media to connect with their audiences - which include customers, prospects and the media. And more and more those audiences are blurring. I know for us at HubSpot the process of PR and Marketing are very mixed - and this is because of the emergence of social media where you can reach media and customers at the same time in similar ways - and sometimes they are even the same people.

I do think that social media has a really important role to play in PR. It is a great tool to more easily connect with a larger number of people. I can already tell you that I am interacting in a more productive way with more influential people in our industry during my job at HubSpot than I have in previous jobs. And HubSpot is only a small company without a long history. Social media has made this possible.

I also think social media has a really important role to play in marketing. We use all forms of social media to market HubSpot (Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, Blogging, Digg, Delicious, etc.) and they have been very effective.

But, as I mentioned earlier, it is hard to separate them. The people I interact with are often both potential customer and media member. After all, pretty much anyone with a blog or even a Facebook account is a member of the media today, since even with a tool like Facebook you are publishing content to your readers (friends).

Finally, I published an article yesterday about how to measure your marketing results in social media, perhaps some of the folks on this post will find it interesting:
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/3561/Social-Media-How-to-Measure-Marketing-Effectiveness.aspx

[...] backed up on 02:12:2008Originally Published: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:52:29 +0000http://chrisbrogan.com/is-social-media-more-for-pr-than-fo… Consider this second in a series of posts where I don’t really know what I’m talking [...]